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About Geoffrey Mock

Geoffrey Mock is Egypt country specialist and chair of the Middle East County Specialists for AIUSA. He has worked on the Middle East for Amnesty for 17 years. Among other work, he has assisted Amnesty's efforts to support human rights defenders, end unfair trials and torture in Egypt and to promote Egypt's traditionally vigorous civil society against harassment and legal attacks from both the government and non-governmental sources. His particular interest, at a time of diminishing space in which Egyptian human rights activists can act, is developing avenues outside of the U.S. government in which American activists can best connect and support the human rights work being done on the ground in Egypt. He works as an editor and manager of communications at Duke University.
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You get stories like the one told by this woman living in a refugee camps. She has been in a Lebanese camp for three years with her two sons, one of whom is autistic. She has necessities, but little else; what she dreams of is that her children get an education. SEE THE REST OF THIS POST

The noose is tightening around Egypt’s non-governmental organizations (NGOs). These Egyptian NGOs — essentially what we call “nonprofits” in the US – focus on everything from human rights to other important issues. They may soon lose their independence under an old law that the new Egyptian government is bringing back to life. SEE THE REST OF THIS POST

Artwork by Shirmeen, aged 16, niece of disappeared Faisal Faraz, who was apprehended during a bus journey to Peshawar in Pakistan in July 2005. Several other persons who had been subjected to enforced disappearances testified to seeing them in detention but state officials denied their detention and any knowledge about their whereabouts.

“A mother’s broken heart keeps waiting to know something about her only son, whom she has not seen for 670 days. A new hope is born on every sunrise to see Dr Mohamed Arab once again with us.”

James Foley once said he reported from the Middle East because, “We’re not close enough to it. And if reporters, if we don’t try to get really close to what these guys – men, women, American [soldiers] … are experiencing, we don’t understand the world” (Photo Credit: Jonathan Wiggs/The Boston Globe via Getty Images).

This is why the beheading of reporter James Foley is so important to anyone concerned about human rights in the region. It’s important not just because, as Amnesty International says, it is “a war crime,” but because Syria right now by most standards is now the most dangerous place in the world for journalists.

Somewhere in Egypt, Hosni Mubarak must be smiling, knowing that three years after his downfall, he has won after all.

After three decades of muzzling civil society, of harassing, detaining and torturing political activists, scholars, journalists, lawyers, doctors and regular citizens of all stripes, Mubarak never was able to accomplish what the new regime has achieved in a matter of months.

On Saturday, an Egyptian court will formally rule on the initial 683 death sentences handed out in April in a case involving the death of a police officer in the August 2013 protests that followed the removal of President Muhamad Morsi. The sentence followed only by a matter of days a second, similar case in which 528 Egyptians were given the death penalty.

The abduction of Zaitouneh, Wa’el Hamada, Samira Khalil, and Nazem Hamadi is clouded in mystery as no group has come forward to claim responsibility. But Amnesty International and 44 other international organizations joined together this week to ask Zahran Alloush, commander of Jaysh al-Islam, one of the most influential groups controlling the Douma area, to help ensure Razan and her colleagues are released safely.

The U.N. now numbers the total of displaced persons in Syria at 6.5 million. 2.8 million more have have fled the country and are now in refugee camps in Lebanon, Jordan and elsewhere, overwhelming authorities in those countries (Photo Credit: Khalil Mazraawi/AFP/Getty Images).

How many different times can Russia and China stand against justice for human rights abuses in Syria?

It’s been one month since the judge sentenced 528 people – alleged supporters of former Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi – to death. On Monday, the judge returned to the case, confirmed 37 death sentences and gave the remaining 491 people life in prison.

At the same time, he sentenced 683 more people to death in a trial that news reports stated lasted just minutes. Both cases have to do with deaths of Egyptian policemen during violence that arose in August 2013 following Morsi’s removal from office.

The two cases stand as a mockery of justice, death sentences issued on an industrial scale. The size of the injustice is raising outrage around the world, but beneath the headlines, there are important human rights messages to be learned.

President Obama waves as he boards Air Force One prior to his departure for Saudi Arabia to meet with King Abdullah (Photo Credit: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images).

Even by the standard of low expectations set for a trip described as fencing-mending, President Obama’s public silence on Saudi Arabian human rights spoke loudly today.

There was no open mention of the Saudi crackdown on peaceful political activists, a crackdown that brands anyone who speaks out a criminal and sends them to jail. There was no clear support for religious minority groups who are standing strong for their right to practice religion.